Amanda and the Cursed Moon

The time is out of joint. Oh cursed spite, that I was born to put it right. William Shakespeare / Hamlet

Deck Summary

POV: You just love the beautifull tokens so much you'll be glad to have them filling the chaos bag at all time. You love watching people with intensity and don't mind going insane because you went though your deck 4 times during a game.

This is a true solo Amanda Sharpe deck built around curse tokens, totally suitable for True solo. This deck was able to win The Feast of Hemlock Vale in Standard difficulty with a total of 43 XP (including 5 from the conclusion). If you ever did this campaign, you know the finale is very difficult and messy, yet Amanda managed to get R1 with ease.

| Difficulty:||★★★★☆ - choosing which card to put behind Amanda, when to trigger Blasphemous Covenant, when to trigger Dawn Star, Favor of the Moon or how to stack clues with Gené Beauregard can be tricky. The deck also recquires to manage your hand-size at all time. If you ever go to 2-3 cards in hand, you're in a very bad position and might not recover)

| Enemy Management:||★★★☆☆ - very good for true solo, sometimes a bit random since it relies on tokens pulls, so be aware of that)

| Clue-getting:||★★★★★ - way too good for true solo, but the overkill clue-gathering can be interesting with Gené Beauregard

| Encounter protection:||★★★☆☆ - very good when you have icons under you, pretty bad outside of that.

| Survivability:||★★☆☆☆ - the 7/7 statline is good but you will mostly have 0 ways of healing and/or cancelling so be aware of that.

| Economy:||★★★☆☆ - not very consistent

| Card Drawing:||★★★★★ - you will generally go through your deck each game, sometimes twice in later scenarios.

Amanda’s power lies in shaping her turn around a high-impact skill each round. All the skills in the deck can commit to multiple icons, if not 4 (wild) icons ! So be prepared to be at 6-7 base power for most tests. You won't need the icons most of the time since all the damage is basically done with your tokens !

Try to put enablers behind Amanda Sharpe early on so that you can fill the bag pretty quickly, like Promise of Power and Esoteric Method. You won't need a lot of assets. Grim Memoir is very good in the early turns to help you draw a bit, as well as Gabriel Carillo, basically the draw-version of Dr. Milan Christopher. Blasphemous Covenant will help you with keeping most of the tokens inside along the course of the game and also helps with 1 test/turn. Once the bag is filled (it generally is very quick), you can start to kill enemies with ease with testless damage.

Clue Acquisition

Amanda’s clue engine can be pretty sick:

• Perception and later on Perception offers card draw and testing efficiency.
• Deduction and Deduction can grab 2-3 clues per round, even if this will be less necessary in solo most of the time.
• For tougher locations, use Stirring Up Trouble which is also very good to fill up the bag with tokens.

Enemy Management

Enemies are handled through a blend of testless damage thanks to and testing:

• Occult Invocation is an easy spell to take at the start of the campaign: you will be able to handle most enemies by ditching cards.
• Occult Lexicon provides Blood-Rites, enabling 1-2 testless damage and card filtering. You need to find first yes, but since Amanda draws a LOT and will generally go through her deck at least once/game, you can't miss it.

Later, with the help of several curse enablers like Promise of Power and Control Variable, the chaos bag will be filled with nice tokens and the fun will really start.

• Gaze of Ouraxsh lets you nuke enemies all around, even aloof enemies. It's mostly a 4-5 damage card without any drawback.
• Dawn Star is a cool card to help you pass test despite drawing multiple (if not all !) curse tokens. Just like the Gaze, it's very good to finish off enemies and/or kill distant ones.

Chaos Bag Control & Tech

Favor of the Moon and Blasphemous Covenantare your bag control duo. Use Favor to “draw” a specific token and then cancel the downside using Blasphemous Covenant while also making it return to the bag after the test. It's pretty good while revealing tokens for Gaze of Ouraxsh or if you have any Dawn Star or Control Variable in hand.

Economy and Draw

Money: Cryptic Writings is a pretty valuable card in Amanda since you will have higher chances at drawing it than most other investigators thanks to your ability. Favor of the Moon is also a good tool to help you get 2 resources back. Yes, it's pretty slow, but the deck is not very resource-consumming once you have 1-2 assets in play. Blood-Rite can also be used to gain resources. With the upgraded version, gaining 3 resources by ditching 3 cards after filtering is actually pretty interesting.

Cards: Grim Memoir will generally be a very good card to mulligan for early on since it will draw you 3-4 cards during the game while also helping to investigate. Blood-Rite is basically a draw-2 spell for 0 that can help you filter your deck. Don't bother to use it only for that if you don't have any enemy around. Thanks to Amanda Sharpe's draw at upkeep and often drawing from Perception, the deck runs lean and rarely suffers from draw issues.

Early game

Build: With the 3 XP granted by In the Thick of It, take the Blasphemous Covenant since it will be usefull from scenario n°1 as well as 1 copy of Gabriel Carillo. Mulligan: hard mulligan for Grim Memoir, 1 ally and at least 1 copy of a skill to put beneath you. Since you have so much card draw, it's ok to not have anything of value in your hand.

Here are listed the main cards you might want to take, with the highest priority at the top.

Gaze of Ouraxsh: This will be one of the best cards to deal with enemies so grab it pretty quickly.

Esoteric Method might be the best skill to use with Amanda Sharpe. It's amazing early on the fill up the bag with and later it's a better card than Promise of Power since it doesn't deal you 2 horror/commit.

Occult Lexicon – Fully unlocks Blood-Rites to 1 shot mos enemies or you can also make some of the spell very recursive if you want to filter your deck more.

Perception: Improves your card engine a lot, sometimes drawing you 4-6 cards during your turn.

Gené Beauregard – A fantastic ally for solo (if not one of the best ever printed): boosts stats and gives a free move/clue effect that is hard to ignore.

The Stygian Eye – One-turn power spike when things are tight. It's also very good during mythos phase and/or to ditch some cards in your threat area like Frozen in Fear or other based treacheries.

Deduction: Doubles/triples your clue output. Only take it if you know some locations have 2/3 clues / investigators, or if you already took Gené Beauregard since it's very good to grab all the clues you stacked with her.

Charisma: mainly to run Gabriel Carillo + Gené Beauregard together.

Optional:

• The Eye of Truth can be a funny skill card to add here. Since it's a _practiced _skill, you will be able to fetch it easily when necessary. Be aware that you will have to attach it to any treachery it is commited to, so don't lose the card while it's under during your turn.
• Gené Beauregard is an expensive yet strong ally that you might want to play more often. Her ability can break several scenarios in the game so I wouln't mind grabbing another on just to crush unfair campaign finales like TFA or Hemlock.
• Justify the Means: It might be weird to not include this card, since it's basically a full round of auto-success for Amanda, but I found this skill to be a) pretty unfun and b) not really centered since you can ignore the cost of the skill with Amanda as per the erratum on Amanda Sharpe : "Yes, Amanda can use her Forced ability to play Justify the Means without paying its additional cost." (Rules Forum Answer, September 2024)

Weaknesses and Considerations

• High-damage enemies: This deck prefers to dodge or chip away mulitple enemies. It can sometimes lack a bit of resource burst to kill the bosses, that's why an other copy of Cryptic Writings is sometimes important.
• Always keep at least 4 cards or more in your hand. If you go below, you might not have good skills to put behind Amanda Sharpe and your next turns might be very difficult.
• treacheries: Amanda Sharpe sits at 2 most of the time if you didn't pu any card with icons under her. This can be tricky during the mythos phase, but since you have so many cards with , this should not happen a lot. Mouse Mask can still help for difficult situations like this.

This is a thematic Amanda build for true solo around tokens, merging skill-focused efficiency with some occult flavor. It's very strong but might rely a bit on story assets to resist the damage/horror output. If you’re looking for a powerful solo Amanda deck that blends mysticism, intellect, and a bit of moon magic, this is a build worth trying. It was designed around Hemlock's finale but I can see this deck crushing most campaigns.